It really is kinda sad to see a company that had a stellar reputation for quality products just start making crap. For so many years when buying a printer it was a no brainer, just get a HP and be done. I would buy anything BUT a HP printer now. Their consumer lever products got so bad now they are just giving up.

People do seem to expect more from an HP product that from Apple. That is, some how, Apple has been very successful in selling devices with very scaled-back feature sets. ...and people revel in the minimalism. --impressive.

Cowboom had 32GB 1st gen iPads on sale today for $299, until they sold out.

Yeah, silly people. Expecting to have applications available the day they drop $500 for a device.

That's just plain insane.

Certainly HP made a huge mistake in trying to compete so late in the cheap-tablet market. --no argument there.

Just may be that they were late to the game. WebOS was very well received. There are reports that they got it to run on an iPad and that it performed better than on their own hardware.

Really the thing I think that hurt sales was their decision to hold the SDK until the hardware was out.

That meant their were no apps for the device other than what HP shipped it with.

Either a monumentally dumb decision or an indication that they stopped supporting the project before it ever launched.

If I can verify that it will take a Linux distro I may grab one anyway.

Android on the HP TouchPad: Let’s Do It! | xda-developers

XDA is offering a $500 bounty to any team that can port Android to the Touchpad

HP TouchPad - xda-developers

The minimalism is part of Apple's brilliance, IMHO. They do depend heavily on third-party developers to create content that allows a particular user to "customize" their device to some extent. The particular apps that an individual chooses (and where to put them) really make the device feel like it's "yours". It's easy/simple/inexpensive to do also.

Contrast this to what (IMHO) is one of the most common mistakes made by technology devlopers these days - over-featurization.

Far too many manufacturers of... well... EVERYTHING saturate it with extra features, bloatware and silly doodads because they mistakenly think that's what people want. I don't and I suspect most people don't. For one, I want just a few key apps that work well, reliably and have very intuitive, simple, easy-to-figure-out interfaces. The iPhone/iPad selections for "basic" built-in apps are thoughtful and allow the device to be used in a basic way all on its own, but leaves endless possibility to expand via cheap/readily-available apps if a user wants additional functionality or a more complex/feature-laden version of one of the "base" apps (like the calendar, the camera, etc.)

Can't speak to the HP tablets per se, but I do know HP is DEFINITELY guilty of trying to build way too much garbage into their products recently, generally speaking. I really hope they (and other manufacturers) learn the lesson from Apple. Sometimes less really IS more. As long as the "less" is a GOOD less - good quality, thoughtful and appropriate. Get true to your mission and stop trying to design all the functionality yourself to the point you need a 500-page manual to run a flippin' calculator!

Anyone have a xoom, or good android tablet? I need one for testing and wanted to know which one is best.

Let's just hope HP doesn't get out of the server market or the best hardware will be lost.